This team is the highest support tier available at Upwork, as such we endeavor to be the clear, concise, and helpful face of the company at all times.
Upwork’s Values:
- Inspire a boundless future of work
- Put our community first
- Have a bias towards action
- Build amazing teams
As part of the Upwork Customer Experience (CX) team we strive to provide superior experiences that:
- ENGAGE in ways that matter
- ENHANCE our Brand Value
- support GROWTH
- make us PROUD
Upwork wants to produce fresh, friendly, relevant, and instructive content. Here are a few notes on the voice and tone to use in your writing for this team.
- Friendly and accessible, not overly stuffy
- Helpful and knowledgeable, not bossy
- Expert, but not confusing. Explain things as briefly as possible.
- Economy of words is desirable
- Show empathy and understanding
General Guidelines
- Say it with as few words as possible. If you can edit something out, do
- Never start a sentence with “According to” or “X has found.”
- Avoid heavy, overwhelming paragraphs! They should be broken down into short chunks.
- Use a first name for our users. Make sure you account for data errors and use Max for MAX, or any obvious correction you can see. Sometimes a user’s name only shows initials, look into the file further to see if you can find the complete first name
- Be friendly and personable
- Show empathy for the user’s situation
Openings and Closings
Always open a ticket or email with Hi or Hello. We do not use Dear, it can sound impersonal or stuffy. Likewise we would not use Yo, or Hey.
Ex. Hi Miranda, or Hello Miranda,
Closings should use Sincerely, Best regards, or Warm regards. Then your first name. You can use The Upwork Team, or Executive Escalations, as needed.
Ex. Sincerely,
<<Your first name>>
The Upwork Team
A. Have a look at some of your old tickets. Try to rewrite a few with these things in mind. Have one of your team members look it over if you are in doubt:
- Could I make this shorter
- Are there grammar errors I could fix
- Does my subject, or title, use capitalization properly
- Am I friendly and personable
- Have I shown empathy
B. After you are more comfortable with your own tickets, try searching in zendesk by some common keywords that relate to things we handle, it is ok to search for your favorite topics. When you find a ticket, rewrite it like you have the ones above. Here is an example of some keywords you could use:
- Subpoena
- CS Escalations
- Non Delivery
- Legal Escalation
C. Next try Google for some of your favorite subjects like: freelancing, remote work, or any other favorite. Pick a small article or blog to re-write. Start looking at what can be removed without changing the content or meaning. She how short you can get it.
D. Look over your re-writes and scrutinize carefully for your weak areas.
- If you are too wordy, practice 140-240 character tweet like grammatically correct blurbs.
- If you find yourself relying on spell check a lot, browse the internet for a good spelling program or game.
- You can increase your vocabulary with a word of the day email subscription or website.
- If you forget punctuation marks, or other technical language details, rely on this guide. There are also lots of good references online if that is easier.
- Could I show more empathy? Let people know they are heard by paraphrasing their questions back to them. Ex. “As I understand you, you have purchased a new computer and can’t remember your security question.” Validate their experience. Ex. “I understand your frustration” Be a team, use words like us and we. Ex. “I am sure we can work together to come to a resolution.”
E. Write a Knowledge Base (KB) style, or blog post style, practice article focusing on one of your favorite tasks, or experiences while working with Upwork. KB style articles can be public facing or internal.
Titles and Headings
Knowledge Base Article Titles
Titles of articles are in regular font (everything but articles, conjunctions, and prepositions capitalized), and in quotations.
Ex. Today I finished reading the “Confirmation of Services Workflow” knowledge base article.
Team Names
The names of teams or departments are in uppercase for our company.
Ex. The people on the Marketplace Quality team love to dance.
Job Titles
Job titles are capitalized only when referencing a specific person; otherwise, they’re lowercase.
Ex. The staff is excited to meet Jessie, the new Team Lead.
Ex. The role of the team lead is to...
Headings - Ticket/Email Subject Lines
Capitalize important words (everything but articles, conjunctions, and prepositions) in headings—the same goes for subheadings.
CORRECT: 10 Things You Didn't Know about Fixed Price and Hourly Contracts
INCORRECT: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Fixed Price And Hourly Contracts
Abbreviations
Avoid abbreviating any words that the user won’t understand immediately. For common abbreviations, include a period.
Ex. Capt. Smith issued a bonus for the project “Web Design Integration,” for excellent adherence to deadlines.
Acronyms
Spell out full name on first reference, followed by the acronym in parentheses. It’s okay to use the acronym after that.
Ex. The Confirmation of Services (COS) document is required for some freelancers. They can submit their completed COS documents to freelancersucess@upwork.com.
To make an acronym plural, just add s (no apostrophe).
Ex. Our team processed 17 COSs today.
Ampersands
Avoid using ampersands (&) in general text, headings, or subheadings—use “and” instead. An ampersand may be used in sheets or tables where space is tight, or when it’s part of a company name or book title.
Contractions
Use contractions (it’s, you’re, they’re, she’s) in your writing to make the tone fit our goal. We want to sound personal and not stuffy.
Lists
Don’t use periods after list items, even if they form complete sentences. Similarly, don’t use semicolons or “and” after list items.
Ex. 1. Invest in relationship-building
2. Position communication as part of your core strategy
3. Make a plan
Numbers
Write out numbers up to and including ten, except in percents (see below) and hard data. The exception to this rule is if you have a list of numbers that includes numbers under and above ten: in this case, just make the list consistent (see the second example).
Ex. Of the 20 marketing employees, only three decided to go to the party.
Ex. The table was stocked with 2 cakes, 10 pizzas, and 24 sodas.
Write out numbers at the start of a sentence.
Ex. Twenty-two of the agents agreed.
Dates
As an international company, the date style using slashes 12/10/2017, can be confusing and we should use the following format:
- 1-SEPT-2014
Punctuation
Apostrophes
Only use an apostrophe when you need to form the possessive of the word; not the plural. The only exception to this is the possessive form of “it”, which is “its.”
Ex. The new CFO’s office has its own entrance.
Ex. A hard day’s work.
Ex. Laura’s project was damaged by the rain.
If the word ends in s, just add an apostrophe to form the possessive.
Ex. The CEOs’ main goal is...
Ex. Everyone stared at Charles’ new car, a Tesla Model S.
Colons and Semicolons
Colons (:) are used in sentences to introduce something that follows like a quotation, example or a list.
Ex. Colon
She kept tweeting: “I really want my profile approved!”
Remember: Always show empathy when writing to our customers.
The Customer Service Team has many branches: Phone, Chat, High Value Support, Enterprise and more.
Semicolons (;) are used to join two independent clauses, to separate main clauses joined by a conjunctive adverb or to separate items in a list that already uses commas.
Ex. Semicolon
This has been a busy day; we have had a lot of email.
You need to keep your computer’s operating system updated; otherwise you are more vulnerable to viruses and other attacks.
We had freelancers from Lima, Peru; Santiago, Chile; and Caracas, Venezuela.
Commas
Use the serial comma before the “and” or “or” in lists. Also known as the Oxford comma.
Ex. Our team is working on legal escalations, internal escalations, Better Business Bureau (BBB) responses, and executive summaries.
Dashes
Use em dashes (or two hyphens) with no spaces for setting off text or emphasizing a point in a sentence
Ex. Some of the teams—account security, compliance, marketplace quality, and risk management—deal with the security and safety of our platform.
Ellipses
Use non-spaced ellipses, like this: … (not this: . . .).
Hyphens
Use hyphens in numeric ranges, but try to use “to” (instead of a hyphen) when including a numeric range in a sentence.
Ex. Numbers 11 to 25 are from the second experiment.
Ex. 9-10 a.m.
Quotation Marks
Use said (not says) when quoting someone.
Ex. “The general consensus is not to do the hokey-pokey at work,” said Sam.
Always use double quotation marks with single quotation marks inside.
Ex. “I read the article ‘Hourly Contracts,’” said Margot.
Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks.
Ex. “I was using my work diary,” Carol said, “when my screen just went blank.”
Question marks and exclamation points go inside quotation marks only when they’re part of what the speaker is saying.
Ex. Helena said, “Would you like to take advantage of our Talent Services?”
Ex. Helena asked if Marcos wanted Talent Services. Can you believe he said “I would”?
Colons, semicolons, and dashes always go outside quotation marks.
Ex. The following people have a new training hangout called “Training”: Customer Service team leads, Talent Innovation team leads, and the Executive Escalations team.
Word Choice
Between vs. among
Use between with two people or things and among with three or more people or things.
Effect vs. affect
To affect means to produce a change or influence something.
Ex. How will the new invoicing structure affect the payroll department?
An effect is a change that has occurred.
Ex. The effect of the new invoicing structure will be negligible.
Affect is a verb 99% of the time; effect is a noun 99% of the time.
Insure, ensure, and assure
To insure means to protect against financial loss.
Ex. You are insured against theft.
To ensure means to make certain or to confirm.
Ex. To ensure your success as a freelancer, please complete your profile in full.
To assure means to promise. (We assure a person.)
Ex. I can assure you that we take your account security very seriously.
In vs. on
In the simplest terms, “in” refers to being within a given space while “on” refers to being on top of it. However, these two words are often used idiomatically—that is, in unusual or distinctive ways.
Regular
Ex. Lena looked at all of the messages in the message center.
Ex. We have a meeting today on the calendar.
Unusual
Ex. That is, in fact, a great suggestion.
Ex. Our team reference page is really on point.
Which vs. that
Which, when used correctly, is part of a nonrestrictive clause, which is preceded or set off by commas. This clause is not essential to the meaning of the sentence, and can be taken out without changing the meaning.
Ex. The hackathon, which was grueling, took place two weeks ago.
That is part of a restrictive clause, which is not set off by commas. This clause is essential to sentence meaning, and can’t be removed.
Ex. The hackathon that Upwork holds every year is especially intense.
Rule of thumb: if the which in the sentence sounds wrong with a comma in front of it or around the entire phrase, the sentence probably needs to be using that.
Quick Check Graphic
Cohesive Devices
These are words or phrases you can use to quickly bring ideas together. Try to use the shortest ones. The less words you can use the better.
Filler Words
Avoid filler words such as: that, just, only, really, slightly, almost, and seemed. The following link has a great infographic on this.